The Whitechapel Art Gallery has got a faultless reputation for putting on consistently pretentious exhibitions come rain or shine. Check out this masterwork featuring string. A penetrating insight into the concept of time, linear distortion and the invisible cortex of social ties and customs that bind us in the social weave. Then again, it could just be balls of string.

Tourist honey pot the London Dungeons promises its visitors a ‘horrible time.’

It certainly delivers with prohibitive ticket prices, one-and-half hour queuing times and exhibits that look like they haven’t been changed since the place opened.

A motley collection of drama students ham it up in various guises as our guides through London’s historical underbelly. Truly un-terrifying, witless mannequins who could be out-acted by a parrot.

A special thank you (not) to the miserable young lump who sullenly guarded the way to Traitor’s Gate.

If they are an indication of the new vanguard of thespians we can expect lean times indeed on the Oscar front.

The only thing that scared me was the entrance price and the fact that this sort of tosh is still being promoted as one of the capital’s must see attractions.

I also suffered the humiliation of being singled out in the torture chamber and made to sit in a chair while the ‘torturer’ displayed the use of various tools of the trade.

No water boarding or sleep deprivation here. Dick Cheney’s medieval relatives applied more subtle methods such as hooks driven into the buttocks, tongue rippers, hot irons and what looked like a Medieval cigar cutter for loping off your wedding tackle.

The last straw was staggering outside to find some skull-faced midget tottering up and down Tooley Street promoting the dungeons as the ultimate tourist experience. I felt like firing him out of the nearest circus canon into a brick wall.